Japanese Patent No. 4563832 describes a lever device used to switch shift positions of a lever in a vehicle. Such a lever device is often applied to a shift-by-wire lever device that sends electrical signals corresponding to the shift position of the lever to a transmission in order to switch actuation modes of the transmission. The operation lever is, for example, movable in two directions, namely, a shift direction, which extends in the front-rear direction of the vehicle body, and a select direction, which extends perpendicular to the shift direction.
The operation lever in the publication is pivotally coupled to a housing of the lever device by two shafts. The operation lever is pivoted about one of the shafts when operated in the shift direction and pivoted about the other shaft when operated in the select direction. In this manner, two shafts are required in the conventional structure to move the operation lever in different directions.